A very short entry today as I have spent the day filming with the BBC talking drug and human trafficking, smuggling and counterfeit goods in Odessa – naturally I will eagerly await my BAFTA nomination!
So having spent the day talking trafficking routes in and out of Odessa and more broadly Ukraine – and basically stating the obvious, in that serious and organised crime will always choose the route of least resistance – and Ukraine is probably not as robust as the EU States when it comes to preventing entry or egress of illicit “goods” on the European continent, it is perhaps good timing that today, an announcement of the opening of Odessa Port’s new terminal will be in Autumn 2013 – an absolutely necessary economic infrastructure addition in respect of legitimate trade – but also another point of weakness in a somewhat porous and very large international land and sea Odessa border.
With such a large international land and sea border, how can Odessa be anything other than porous and a route of least resistance for serious and organised crime?
It can be inspiring, it can be unifying, it can be a moment of hope or defiance that ignites the courage of others – in short, it can have impact.
It can also be completely empty of meaning, condescending, devoid of rationale and ultimately, pointless in the extreme.
And so, 18th May brought to an end the 2 month “Rise Ukraine” strategy of the United Opposition – Batkivshchyna, UDAR and Svoboda parties – in Kyiv.
After countless rallies in numerous (opposition friendly) cities drawing crowds of a few thousand people each time – worryingly low numbers if you are an opposition party leader to be blunt – the finale in Kyiv attracted a only few thousands people once again.
I would have expected for 10,000 – 15,000 after months of rallies leading up to a well publicised finale – and even that number would be disappointing.
All the issues I raised in the above link back in March have proven to come to fruition – not that it would take anybody with a modicum of common sense and even the most basic understanding of Ukrainian politics and society any effort to come to that same conclusion.
When adding all the reported attendance numbers from all the rallies over the past 2 months, it doesn’t even get close to the gate numbers of Manchester United playing an average team on a very wet and cold Tuesday night at Old Trafford.
To be quite honest I still have no idea why the opposition embarked on such a strategy that was so clearly doomed to failure. I still cannot deduce why I was asked to “rise” over the past 2 months just to now sit back down again – possibly until October 2015 when the next presidential elections are due.
There has certainly been no impact or identifiable causal effect from the “Rise Ukraine” campaign, other than to identify just how few people the opposition parties have managed to turn out during this time.
Hmmm.
Anyway, back to today’s “Rise Ukraine” (anti)climax of the 2 month campaign, which saw the opposition party leaders sign a joint agreement in front of a pitiful crowd of about 4,ooo people relating to the presidential elections in 2015.
This agreement states that all opposition parties will support any opposition candidate that makes it to the second round of voting in the presidential elections.
That is a significant change in rhetoric from the past few months where is has been consistently claimed that a single nominee from the United Opposition would run.
Now it seems rather than a single opposition candidate to run against the current incumbent from the very beginning of any presidential election campaign (in the first round), the opposition leaders have failed (unsurprisingly) to agree on one of them running for the top job with the unified support of the others from the off.
Thus the plan after the least popular two have been eliminated in the first round of voting, leaving one to go head to head with Yanukovych, is to then unite behind their last man standing for the second round of voting. A cozy little agreement granted – but will the opposition voters turn out in sufficient number in the second round to vote for a candidate that is not the man they voted for, not from a party they voted for, and does not share the same ideology as the man and party they voted for in the first round only a few weeks previously?
As Klitschko never seems to tire of saying, there are ideological differences between himself, Yatseniuk and Tyahnybok, and the parties they lead. That is also true of their supporters differing ideologies.
Time will tell if opposition unification around a single presidential candidate after the first round of voting, rather than prior to any voting, will prove to be a sound strategy – I have serious doubts that it is a good strategy, although I also have serious doubts (at the time of writing), that Yatseniuk, Klitschko or Tyahnybok will beat Yanukovych anyway (even with full transparency and on a level playing field – which they may not get).
And so to the impact and underlying realities of the symbolic signing of the joint statement of opposition leaders, pledging to support each – other only when they themselves have been eliminated from the presidential race.
The underlying and sad reality is, there is little genuine unity amongst the opposition. The impact of this agreement is almost zero, given that when all is said and done, ultimately, the public will be faced with the choice between Yanukovych or another in the second round of voting – opposition agreement or not.
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On a completely different subject, there will probably be nothing from me tomorrow as I am doing something for the BBC – and their filming may take some time as I am not a great fan of being on camera, so single takes are very unlikely. Thus I doubt I will have the time or interest to blog after being “Beeb’d” all day.
Now here is an interesting little story – somewhat comical to a degree – which leads nicely into Ukrainian voting systems.
Andriy Shkil, a former Batkivshchnya (BYuT) MP of the previous parliament, has been refused asylum by the Czech Republic, a nation well known for granting asylum via the historical legacy of Vaclav Havel who rarely turned an application down.
Why did the Czech Republic refuse his application for asylum?
The answer lays within the Schengen Visa system.
Although free to travel anywhere within the Schengen area once a Ukrainian has a Schengen Visa, they have to enter and egress the Schengen zone via the specific nation that granted the Visa. If Poland granted the Visa, a Ukrainian who wanted to visit Italy for example, would have to travel there and back via Poland.
Personally I don’t know a Ukrainian who isn’t aware of the rules – although undoubtedly there will be some.
Logic would dictate, following on from such basic rules, that if an individual is going to claim asylum somewhere within the EU, that also will necessarily need to occur in the nation that issued the Visa, rather than seeking asylum in any EU nation an individual may take a fancy to. Ultimately, a nation issuing a Schengen Visa must have some responsibility for their decision to grant – or not – an individual entry, for it is their decision and not that of any other Schengen area state who may well have made a different decision.
And so, in a way, it is rather comical that a one-time parliamentarian – an individual supposedly bright enough to have been trusted in creating and supporting – or not – Ukrainian legislature, has tried to claim asylum in the Czech Republic on a Schengen Visa issued by France.
Naturally, had Mr Shkil been reelected to the current parliament, he would not be seeking asylum anywhere but enjoying the immunity and impunity being an MP brings – and the fact he is not in parliament today it is not because he was beaten in any constituency seat, but rather due to his very lowly place on the Batkivshchnya Party list when it comes to proportional representation.
The Ukrainian electoral system is a mixed electoral system where 50% of MPs are those who take office through what is officially called Single Member District Plurality (or First Past The Post as most would recognise it), and 50% of MP seats are in parliament due to how high they are placed on their party list vis a vis the percentage of the vote their party gets.
Naturally all the top places on party lists go to the leaders to insure their place in parliament without having to go through the rigors of actually standing against another in the first past the post system in a constituency seat – as they may lose and that would never do!
Placed at 87 on the Batkivshchyna Party list, either Mr Shkil was not willing to pay enough to those who make the party lists to be placed higher, or he was such a poor performer during his tenure that his placing was deliberately done to insure he would not return to parliament. Given the high number of poor performers on most party lists, he was either simply out bid or truly useless beyond comprehension.
Anybody on party lists lower than position 50 are in a precarious position and are certainly not assured of representing a party in parliament. 87th on a party list is a clear signal you will not get your nose in the RADA trough.
Even if we look at the ways of manipulating the proportional representation part of the vote, 87th place would simply not have been high enough to reasonably expect a return to the RADA.
If we look at the independent form of mixed electoral systems, then the 50% of first past the post seats run completely separately and in parallel to the proportional representation 50%. This system can lead, for example, to a party winning all the constituency seats and then half of the 50% of seats allocated by proportional representation – thus giving a party 75% of the parliamentary seats.
Alternatively there is the dependent mixed electoral system, whereby proportional representation places parameters on the system, thus is therefore somewhat dominant over first past the post. For example if a party wins 40% of the national vote, then their party members who win their seats through the first past the post constituency elections take their seats, followed by a remainder from the party list until it reaches the 40% of the popular vote it won.
Yes there are occasions under the dependent system whereby a party may win more seats in the first past the post constituency seat elections, than it should hold under its share of the proportional vote count. Should that be the case, these “overhanging” seats in excess of the proportional vote are honoured and the parliament extends to accommodate the additional MPs for that session – whilst everybody else is represented by their proportional share of the vote.
None of this would have helped Mr Shkil at such a lowly place on the Batkivshchnya Party list – and neither would manipulating the size of voting districts – as Ukraine, for the purposes of its proportional representation, is seen as one big district rather than allocations on a proportional basis by Oblast (county) level.
Quite simply, the smaller the district, the smaller the number of proportional seats available, and thus the higher the percentage of the vote needed to win a seat. The larger the district, the more proportional seats available, the lower the percentage of the vote needed to win a seat – not rocket science (albeit political science summed up by the formula X 1/(X+1)).
Anyway, enough of that academic waffle – Mr Shkil is now in France duly seeking asylum there. The question is, will France grant it given that it is not normally that accommodating compared to the Czech Republic – a nation that was obviously Mr Shkil’s first choice when submitting his asylum application.
A day of contrasts for the Ukrainian Ministry of Health on Wednesday – albeit one with symptoms that runs through the current government.
Firstly and in a move lauded by Human Rights Watch, the decision to approve easier access and dispensing of pain killing drugs such as morphine to terminally ill people was approved.
“This is a major advance, ensuring that Ukraine’s drug policy addresses the legitimate needs for medical opiates for pain relief. Tens of thousands of patients who are in pain will benefit from this reform.” – Diederik Loham, Human Rights Watch
Some pain relief for a nation all too often decried for its human rights issues.
Thus it should have been a good day for those within the Health Ministry, and in particular the Health Minister Raisa Bogatyryova.
Raisa Bogatyryova
However whilst Human Rights Watch was quite properly lauding the aforementioned decision, the cancer called corruption, a systemic disease that cannot have the pain dulled by morphine, was simultaneously being called to account in relation to the Health Ministry by the RADA.
With the Communist Party unusually siding with the opposition, a vote was taken and passed to create a parliamentary committee and inquiry into corruption within the Health Ministry and opaque purchases of UAH 203.48 million of drugs from certain companies.
One has to strongly suspect that once the biopsy of the opaque drug purchases has been made, more than a hint of corruption will be found in the system of the Health Ministry.
The question then arises over whether the infected parts can or will be efficiently surgically removed and if so, whether remission will be a long lasting result.
Apparently, although I have yet to be able to confirm it via non-Batkivshchnya Party channels, the case against Yulia Tymoshenko relating to involvement in the murder of Yevhen Scherban that occurred in 1996, has been quietly dropped – effective 26th April.
If true, a significant step forwards in the eyes of the EU one suspects, as it deletes one of a list of pending cases against her.
However, if true, very little has been said about it publicly by anybody – and you would expect the opposition parties to broadcast such a matter loudly – if only to undermine the abilities and motivations of the Prosecutors Office in the eyes of the public.
At least you would expect such an opposition cacophony unless there is a deliberate political move to distance themselves from the personality Ms Tymoshenko and the circus that surrounds it – and reasons for that there are a-plenty. That is perhaps much easier to do now Sergey Vlasenko, her lawyer/defence council, is no longer a Batkivshchnya MP.
Hopefully corroboration from sources external and unconnected to the Batkivshchyna Party will come soon enough, putting an end to yet another poor decision by the PGO of Ukraine.
Only a few days ago, I mentioned a statement from Stefan Fule relating to no time extension for Ukraine to meet EU expectations in November.
As I stated, despite the bullish tone, this has far more to do with the European political calendar preventing any extension, rather than Stefan Fule developing a rigid, rather than flexible, backbone.
Let’s be quite honest, after 7 difficult years of negotiation for both sides – including some serious concessions by Ukraine – the EU would not normally throw that away for the sake of a few months if there were a few additional months in the political calendar to play with.
The fact is, due to national elections in very influential member states, notwithstanding the European parliamentary elections during the next 2 years, quite simply there is not much room, if any, to allow any political deadlines to slide for a few months. A few years – yes. Look to 2016 at the earliest after German, European parliament, French and UK elections to name but a few – including Ukrainian presidential elections.
Allowing any signing to slide until then, naturally removes the desire for political momentum on either side – raising the question of whether that momentum can be regained several years from now.
Even if the Association Agreement and DCFTA is signed in Vilnius in November, due to the same European political calendar, ratification will still take years for the same reasons.
All blatantly obvious to anybody with half an eye on the European political electoral calendar.
Unfortunately, this seems to an issue completely overlooked by the opposition in Ukraine if Klitschko’s recent comments are anything to go by:
“Even if the association agreement is negotiated and signed, in order to have it ratified by all the EU countries, Ukraine has to comply with the basic political values and principles of the European Community, such as the rule of law, the absence of selective justice, real reforms, and democratic electoral law. To achieve this, Ukraine has much to do and the time is very short.
For our part, we, as the opposition, are pressing on the authorities to make them meet the commitments so that the country should not lose the chance to join the European community. If the Ukrainian authorities fail to adhere to the commitments, the issue of personal sanctions against officials cannot be avoided.”
Firstly, when looking at these comments, it has to be said that negotiations have concluded some time ago – indeed the agreements were initialed by both sides in March 2012, thereby effectively sealing them to major and significant amendment. Thus it is a question of singing the already initialed agreements and no longer negotiating as Klitschko states.
The second paragraph in which he makes reference to personal sanctions on members of the existing government should it fail to adhere to those commitments is really not something that the opposition are likely to achieve – and they must surely be aware of that given the interaction they have with th EU and its member states – so why say it?
What are the chances of the EU placing sanctions on Ukrainian officials – seriously?
Not only are the outcomes of sanctions hit and miss and lengthy when it comes to getting any result, they are actually fairly limited in their scope.
Looking at EU sanctions, they consist of arms embargo, economic and financial sanctions and visa/entry restrictions. No more and no less.
EU sanctions have proven to be of little impact to those individuals within Belarus to whom they are applied. They are not being very seriously considered as far as a mirror of the US Magnitsky Act in respect of Russia and persons therein.
Applying EU sanctions to individuals within Ukraine, without for example, applying them to fellow EaP nation Azerbaijan or individuals within government circles there – which has a far worse democratic, human rights, repression of freedoms and electoral manipulation record – would be difficult to justify to the European public. Particularly so given the lack of impact and results in Belarus.
There is also a lack of EU diplomatic will to raise sanctions on individuals in Ukraine. Only recently I spoke with somebody in the Brussels bubble (Chatham House Rule applied), and he stated that sanctions are not the way forward. They are difficult to gain consensus over to implement, and even harder to then garner the consensus to remove – and Ukraine has its supporters within the EU that would make gaining consensus over sanctions very difficult.
It is somewhere that sufficient numbers of EU bureaucrats do not want to go with regard to Ukraine.
Now if I am reliably informed of this, then surely this must have been made very clear indeed to the likes of Mr Klitschko and the other opposition leaders, who will have undoubtedly raised the issue several times – so why raise the issue again publicly if there is a high probability that it simply won’t happen.
When – as will more likely than not – sanctions against individuals are again publicly called for by the opposition, and again rebuffed by the EU – with a presidential election in Ukraine now on the horizon, how would any refusal reflect on the ability, authority and perception of international influence of any opposition candidate be in the eyes of the Ukrainian electorate?
There is much to be said for timing. Being right and/or decent is not enough to win an election. There is the overriding need to be convincing.
Time is indeed running out, not only for Ukraine to have progressed enough to allow the signing of the Association Agreement and DCFTA, but also for the opposition to stop the political showboating and empty rhetoric.
It is now time for the opposition to prepare their own political, economic and social policies ready for an effective delivery to the electorate by whomever is put forward as an opposition presidential candidate. To frame their election campaign as “We were bad when in power, but they are worse” is really not an inspiring electoral campaign – and yet that is all that is currently on offer.
The first to frame the elections in a better way than that, will probably keep the upper hand.
We often read about democracy through the lenses freedom of speech/expression, rule of law, human rights, or free and fair elections, or political responsiveness to the public, accountability, transparency etc - and rightly so – they are all necessarily required for an effective democracy.
But democracy is a very complex structure, and a list of its defining features would be very lengthy indeed.
Less often do we read about democracy needing to be habitual and tolerant.
For any democracy to consolidate there are numerous factors of course, but habit and tolerance are extremely important ingredients – not just recognised and mutually assured by and between the political elite, but also by the society which underpin any democracy if it is ever to consolidate.
It is far easier to change the habits and tolerances of a political party, or the political strata, than it is to change the habits and tolerances of society quickly.
If a political party or the political elite generally, are institutionalised, complex and coherent then internal change is swift – at least in comparison to the speed of societal change, more often than not.
Thus democratic habit and tolerances need to be clearly and robustly displayed amongst the political elite, consistently and over an extended period of time to assist in any changing of societal habit and tolerance.
Democracy after all, is a system in a state of continual friction between opposing/differing ideas, policies, ideologies etc. Thus it demands tolerance for it to work effectively. It demands habit for longevity and consolidation.
It is therefore very sad to read that apparently Svoboda MPs and party officials were at the forefront of what is most definitely a display of intolerance during the Ternipol Victory Day celebrations, that according to the account in the link above, prevented veterans from marking the end of WWII with any degree of reverence and dignity – as those across the rest of European continent and Ukraine managed to do, if they so wished.
Perhaps of even greater sadness following this incident, there are as yet no words of condemnation from the Svoboda leadership, or the other parties in the opposition coalition with Svoboda – all of whom – including Svoboda – claim to be the “democratic opposition” and/or fighting for a democratic Ukraine.
Perhaps it is necessary to point out to the opposition parties of Ukraine, that in a democratic Ukraine, old men and women would be free to mark the end of WWII with dignity and reverence – whether they like them doing so or not!
Yesterday, Stefan Fule EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Nighbourhood Policy, clearly stated that the EU will not extend the time it has given for Ukraine to address the issues of serious concern to the EU when it comes to the signing – or not – of the Association Agreement and DCFTA.
“First of all, we have never postponed the deadline for Kyiv. Foreign ministers of the EU countries in December clearly stated that they would be ready to sign the association agreement at a summit in Vilnius in November. However, they specified three sectors, in which they expect decisions from Ukraine through consistent and obvious efforts,in particular selective justice, the program of reforms and flawed electoral laws.
We see some progress the Ukrainian side made in all the three sectors, including politically motivated proceedings. The release of Lutsenko and Fylypchuk is a step in the right direction. However, much is to be done, including the guarantee that this phenomenon won’t happen again.”
A statement they may seem rather bullish – but in reality is actually dictated by the electoral timetables of several EU Member States and European Parliament elections due to occur in late 2013, 2014 and 2015, events that naturally divert attention away from issues Ukrainian and concentrate EU attention of “the self” and its component parts.
Simply put, no matter how bullish the statement of Fule may appear, if the agreement is not signed in November, the European political calendar simply dos not allow for any such signing until 2015 at the earliest. Any later than November and there will be significant political actors that if not at the end of a legitimate domestic mandate, are just finding their feet under a recently acquired domestic public mandate – issues of legitimacy and all that!
However, all that aside, I am not aware of any serious requests from Ukraine to extend the November deadline anyway – which causes one to ponder the need for such a statement from Fule – other than keeping the pressure for reform momentum on, and forcing the majority and minority in parliament to work together at least over matters EU.
RT @twiplomat: MOJ say 44 Russians in UK jails. Violence=6, sexual offences=5, theft=8, fraud=6, other=10 & 9 for drug, burglary, robbery o… 1 hour ago
